Language; an introduction to the study of speech.
Saved in:
| Author / Creator: | Sapir, Edward, 1884-1939. |
|---|---|
| Imprint: | New York : Harcourt, 1949. |
| Description: | 242 p. 19 cm. |
| Language: | English |
| Series: | Harvest books, HB7. |
| Subject: | |
| Format: | Print Book |
| URL for this record: | http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/579641 |
Table of Contents:
- Preface
- I. Introductory: Language Defined
- Language a cultural, not a biologically inherited, function
- Futility of interjectional and sound-imitative theories of the origin of speech
- Definition of language
- The psychophysical basis of speech
- Concepts and language
- Is thought possible without language?
- Abbreviations and transfers of the speech process
- The universality of language
- II. The Elements of Speech
- Sounds not properly elements of speech
- Words and significant parts of words (radical elements, grammatical elements)
- Types of words
- The word a formal, not a functional unit
- The word has a real psychological existence
- The sentence
- The cognitive, volitional, and emotional aspects of speech
- Feeling-tones of words
- III. The Sounds of Language
- The vast number of possible sounds
- The articulating organs and their share in the production of speechsounds: lungs, glottal cords, nose, mouth and its parts
- Vowel articulations
- How and where consonants are articulated
- The phonetic habits of a language
- The "values" of sounds
- Phonetic patterns
- IV. Form in Language: Grammatical Processes
- Formal processes as distinct from grammatical functions
- Intercrossing of the two points of view
- Six main types of grammatical process
- Word sequence as a method
- Compounding of radical elements
- Affixing: prefixes and suffixes; infixes
- Internal vocalic change; consonantal change
- Reduplication
- Functional variations of stress; of pitch
- V. Form in Language: Grammatical Concepts
- Analysis of a typical English sentence
- Types of concepts illustrated by it
- Inconsistent expression of analogous concepts
- How the same sentence may be expressed in other languages with striking differences in the selection and grouping of concepts
- Essential and non-essential concepts
- The mixing of essential relational concepts with secondary ones of more concrete order
- Form for form's sake
- Classification of linguistic concepts: basic or concrete, derivational, concrete relational, pure relational
- Tendency for these types of concepts to flow into each other
- Categories expressed in various grammatical systems
- Order and stress as relating principles in the sentence
- Concord
- Parts of speech: no absolute classification possible; noun and verb
- VI. Types of Linguistic Structure
- The possibility of classifying languages
- Difficulties
- Classification into form-languages and formless languages not valid
- Classification according to formal processes used not practicable
- Classification according to degree of synthesis
- "Inflective" and "agglutinative"
- Fusion and symbolism as linguistic techniques
- Agglutination
- "Inflective" a confused term
- Threefold classification suggested: what types of concepts are expressed? what is the prevailing technique? what is the degree of synthesis? Four fundamental conceptual types
- Examples tabulated
- Historical test of the validity of the suggested conceptual classification
- VII. Language as a Historical Product: Drift
- Variability of language
- Individual and dialectic variations
- Time variation or "drift"
- How dialects arise
- Linguistic stocks
- Direction or "slope" of linguistic drift
- Tendencies illustrated in an English sentence
- Hesitations of usage as symptomatic of the direction of drift
- Leveling tendencies in English
- Weakening of case elements
- Tendency to fixed position in the sentence
- Drift toward the invariable word
- VIII. Language as a Historical Product: Phonetic Law
- Parallels in drift in related languages
- Phonetic law as illustrated in the history of certain English and German vowels and consonants
- Regularity of phonetic law
- Shifting of sounds without destruction of phonetic pattern
- Difficulty of explaining the nature of phonetic drifts
- Vowel mutation in English and German
- Morphological influence on phonetic change
- Analogical levelings to offset irregularities produced by phonetic laws
- New morphological features due to phonetic change
- IX. How Languages Influence Each Other
- Linguistic influences due to cultural contact
- Borrowing of words
- Resistances to borrowing
- Phonetic modification of borrowed words
- Phonetic interinfluencings of neighboring languages
- Morphological borrowings
- Morphological resemblances as vestiges of genetic relationship
- X. Language, Race and Culture
- Naive tendency to consider linguistic, racial, and cultural groupings as congruent
- Race and language need not correspond
- Cultural and linguistic boundaries not identical
- Coincidences between linguistic cleavages and those of language and culture due to historical, not intrinsic psychological, causes
- Language does not in any deep sense "reflect" culture
- XI. Language and Literature
- Language as the material or medium of literature
- Literature may move on the generalized linguistic plane or may be inseparable from specific linguistic conditions
- Language as a collective art
- Necessary esthetic advantages or limitations in any language
- Style as conditioned by inherent features of the language
- Prosody as conditioned by the phonetic dynamics of a language
- Index